1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a content conversion apparatus and method and, more particularly, to a content conversion apparatus and method, which convert content attributes, such as a file format, a video codec and an audio codec that are not supported by a terminal, depending on information about the terminal and information about the player of the terminal, and then provide the content of which attributes are converted so that the content attributes are supported by the terminal, thus enabling multimedia content services to be provided regardless of the type of terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the remarkable development of mobile terminals, various types of mobile terminals have recently appeared and are being used. As iPhone including AppStore has appeared, the field of mobile terminals has taken on a new aspect. However, since these various types of mobile terminals have hardware performance such as the size, resolution or color level of a mounted screen and computing system ability, and various software characteristics such as supported codecs and the installed media player, the compatibility of content between terminals is very low at present. In these circumstances, the case where a terminal does not support a codec and content is not played when a user uses the content frequently occurs. That is, due to hardware and software characteristics differing between individual mobile terminals and the characteristics of players or the like installed in the mobile terminals, the types of codecs supported by the terminals are different, and thus each terminal does not support the playing of all types of content. For example, there occurs the case where a video that can be played on a mobile terminal which uses Microsoft Window Mobile Operating System (OS) cannot be played on the iPhone terminal of Apple. In this case, when playing the relevant video is attempted, the message “insupportable codec” may be displayed. Some codecs may be downloaded over the Internet and then installed and used. In contrast, several codecs may not be supported at all. Therefore, a problem may arise in that it is impossible to, in this situation, share content among terminals or continuously use content while moving the terminals.